


A Magic Trick

by hellsreluctantheir



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Card Games, Gen, Magic Tricks, Neurodivergent Sam Winchester, Stimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29209740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellsreluctantheir/pseuds/hellsreluctantheir
Summary: He’s itching. Thumb on his right hand tapping each fingertip in turn, up and down, but it’s not quite enough. No books to flick through, no pen to tap. If he starts flicking the door handle Dad’ll yell. The month beforehand he’d pulled the ice out of the mcdonalds cup after he’d finished his coke, liking the clacking sounds they made when he rolled the cubes in his hands, liking the cold. Dad had not been a fan of the water dripping onto the seats. He didn’t like Sam rocking either, or playing with the button on the seatbelt.--A fic about stimming and playing cards.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	A Magic Trick

The slam of the impala doors, the crunch of tires on gravel - they’d left some town Sam didn’t even know the name of half an hour ago but the sounds were still echoing in his ears. It was hardly the first time that Dad had come back to the motel room he and Dean were in barking that they needed to be packed and in the car now, but they’d thought they still had three more days. Their things weren’t as neat as they maybe needed to be. In the hurry Sam had forgotten his books on the nightstand, which wouldn’t have been a big deal but.

He’s itching. Thumb on his right hand tapping each fingertip in turn, up and down, but it’s not quite enough. No books to flick through, no pen to tap. If he starts flicking the door handle Dad’ll yell. The month beforehand he’d pulled the ice out of the mcdonalds cup after he’d finished his coke, liking the clacking sounds they made when he rolled the cubes in his hands, liking the cold. Dad had not been a fan of the water dripping onto the seats. He didn’t like Sam rocking either, or playing with the button on the seatbelt.

Besides they hadn’t been through a drive-through. Still just putting distance between the and the town.

He risks a glance over at Dean, finds him chewing a thumbnail down to a ragged edge and looking right back at him. His eyes flick down to Sam’s hand, the rapid movement of his thumb. Pulls his hand away from his mouth to dig into his backpack.

“Hey, Sammy,” he says, quiet enough that he’s also trying not to bother Dad, “Let me show you something.” He surfaces with two decks of playing cards clutched in his hands.

It’s called a riffle shuffle, and the sound as Dean demonstrates is already _awesome_.

It’s harder to learn. Cutting the decks fine, letting the corners flick and interlock - even if holding the cards hurts Sam’s hand a little. But the final step - he can make the bridge but he can’t tell what Dean’s doing to make the cards jump together, that waterfall, that sound like he’s pulled the corner of a book back with his thumb to feel all the pages flick back.

“Keep your thumbs pressed in on the top,” Dean says, “And you just kind of- open the rest of your hand. A tiny bit at a time.”

A tiny bit at a time, throughout a six hour drive before Dad even considers stopping even for food, Sam figures it out.

—

Dean’s been complaining for three days that they don’t even get to see the fun parts of Vegas, but Sam’s fine just curled over a table at the back of a dive bar on the outskirts. They’re only supposed to be in town for a week or so, so they’re not enrolled in school, but Sam’s got reading he can do. They’d been at Bobby’s for a few days, and after Sam had spent the entire time peppering him with questions, he’d left weighed down with four hefty codexes and a promise to return them in the same condition he found them in. Three were wrapped carefully in the motel room, and the fourth is propped open on the table in front of him.

He’d picked up a couple of cheap decks of cards on the way in, since his were wearing out, and he absentmindedly cuts and shuffles as he reads. Fresh cards, edges biting into his hands a little.

“You’re okay at that,” a voice came, from the next table over. Sam saw an old man sitting there - nods towards Sam’s hands. “Got any other tricks?”

“No,” Sam say.

The old man inclines his head, pulls his own desk out of the inside pocket of his jacket. “Want to learn a few?”

“Like what?”

Like plenty, it turns out. Palming, false cuts, one-handed cuts. Sam’s book stays open, but for a few hours he focuses just on learning everything he can. Until Dean get’s back to drag him back to the motel room, and the guy waves him off with a business card that reads ‘Stan Bushwick - Close-Up Magician’, and tells them to come to a show if they can.

They can’t, but Sam practices the tricks all evening, and finds a book of more to learn for a dollar at a thrift store three weeks later.

—

The games night is Brady’s idea - it makes Sam more nervous than he’d like to admit, especially when Brady said, “I’ve been talking to that girl you keep making eyes at in the library - Jess. I’ll invite her.” It’s still weird having been in one place for more than a year, enough to make some friends. A crush is a crush, the potential of something being more that’s… That’s different. But Brady’s been on edge for a couple of months. On edge, almost brittle, and Sam’s not going to pass up the opportunity to hang out with him in a way that’s probably not going to involve him finding Brady high out of his mind in a bathroom.

Still.

There’s an edge of awkwardness that’s lingering forty minutes in, through setting up snacks, and getting drinks, and deciding what they want to play. Honestly Sam had been struggling to pay attention to the conversation, even with tearing the label on his beer bottle to shreds, so he’s not entirely sure what they’re going with when Brady pulls out the cards and says, “Who wants to shuffle?”

Easy, familiar, to pull the cards out of Brady’s hands. Cut the deck, bend the cuts to break in the cards. Give the edges a few flicks to make sure none of them are sticking together. Riffle the corners, bridge, waterfall the deck back together.

“Wow, look at Las Vegas here,” Brady says, eyebrows raised, before taking a swig of his own beer. But, at least now Sam can pay attention to the conversation.  
He smiles, still nervously, at the table in general. “The skills you pick up from a childhood on the road.” Spread, flip, a second riffle for good measure. “Alright, what am I dealing?”

—

It’s not even a little bit surprising that the board games Charlie drags to the bunker are not, exactly, what the rest of them were used to playing. Maybe Kevin, back in school, if he wasn’t too busy studying. And Sam, honestly, he wouldn’t have turned down any of them, but Dean vetos Betrayal at House on the Hill on the grounds that they live it on a weekly basis, and Kevin says Settlers of Catan will give him war flashbacks, and while Charlie really, really tries to sell that the Battlestar Galactica board game is a great time, the rule booklet is long enough that none of them want to read it.

It takes over an hour for Dean to say, “Can we just do poker, like real men?”

Which, earns him a punch on the arm from Charlie that Sam’s pretty sure was a lot more vicious than Dean’s letting on.

“Who’s gonna deal?” Charlie said, looking disappointed to be pulling out a normal set of cards.

Dean plucks the deck from her hands and tosses it to Sam. “Same as always, watch his hands though. Our Sammy used to be a hell of a magician in his day. You guys get set up, I’m going to get more drinks.”

He winks at Sam on his way out, leaving him to fend off a barrage of questions, enough in quick succession to make it difficult to choose which to answer first. He starts with, “Ok, Dad did this hunt in Vegas once when we were kids,” and cuts the deck.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](https://hellsreluctantheir.tumblr.com/).


End file.
